Clinton camp: Clinton did not sign form on Abedin job change

Hillary Clinton's chief of staff —and not Clinton herself — signed a State Department form that helped another Clinton aide change to a job status that allowed broader private-sector employment, a Clinton campaign official said late Saturday.

Although the campaign will not say whether it has the actual document in hand, aClinton camp assertion that Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills signed paperwork key to Clinton aide Huma Abedin's 2012 change from a full-time role to a "special government employee" could clarify why the Democratic presidential candidate and former secretary of state told an interviewer earlier this month that she was "not directly involved" in converting Abedin's role to a senior adviser and expert.

The shift led to Abedin —who had served as deputy chief of staff —continuing to advise Clinton on a variety of official matters while also taking on paid work from the Clinton Foundation and consulting firm Teneo Holdings. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has been investigating whether Abedin's simulatenous official and private roles led to an improper conflict of interest. Clinton and lawyers for Abedin have denied that and insist that the arrangement was approved by State ethics officials.

Suspicion that Clinton might have been directly involved in Abedin's job shift grew on Thursday when conservative group Judicial Watch released documents it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. They listed Clinton as the official certifying Abedin's new title and proposed her continuing at the top GS-15 pay grade. POLITICO reported that Clinton was named on the official document to be the supervisor to oversee this particular part of the job change, which continues to be the case.

However, the signature on the box under Clinton's name was mostly redacted by State FOIA officials.

POLITICO asked the campaign last week whether the signature could indeed be someone else's, including Mills specifically, but they declined to answer the question. Her camp instead argued that the important point was that the document in question was a mere "title change" that went alongside the process whereby Abedin would become a special government employee.

Now, a Clinton campaign official--speaking on condition of anonymity--is asserting that March 23, 2012 signature is that of Mills, not Clinton. The official declined to comment, however, on how Clinton aides know it was Mills who signed the form or whether they have access to an unredacted copy of the document.

Clinton is likely to be questioned about Abedin's job arrangement and her previous claims on the issue during an interview Sunday morning for NBC's "Meet The Press" and a new weekday edition of the program to be carried by MSNBC. The Clinton campaign official said that, if asked, Clinton can be expected to stick to her previous remarks that she knew about plans for the job shift but was not involved in the process of executing it and to insist that process followed all relevant rules.

Clinton also seems certain to face questions about the email controversy that has clouded her presidential aspirations since March. On Friday, the State Department disclosed that it obtained from the Defense Department email messages Clinton had not provided to State showing an exchange between Clinton and Army Gen. David Petraeus in January and February 2009. Some of the messages were sent to or from Clinton's clintonemail.com account, officials said, even though they were not among the 30,000 messages she turned over to her former agency at its request last December.

Word of the undisclosed Petraeus messages triggered more questions about the completeness of the archive of emails Clinton provided. Clinton aides have explained the lack of emails from prior to March 18, 2009 by saying that during that period she used the same AT&T BlackBerry account she did as a U.S. Senator. She no longer has access to any archive of those messages, aide added.

The Clinton campaign official who spoke to POLITICO Saturday said the campaign has now concluded that Clinton did use her hdr22@clintonemail.com account beginning soon after that domain was created on Jan. 13, 2009, but that she also used the AT&T BlackBerry account during that period. The clintonemail.com account was not linked to President Bill Clinton's server at their family home in Chappaqua, N.Y. until the March 18 date, which is when the server began storing Hillary Clinton's email correspondence, the official said.

Asked where, if anywhere, the Clintonemail.com messages from that two-month period were stored, the official said he did not know.